The Sevco board have voted to accept a £2m loan from Micky Ashley to pay next week’s October wage roll.
With Philip Nash, who used to work for Liverpool and Arsenal, resigning yesterday and Graham Wallace, who used to work for Manchester City, taking a family holiday in Greece it’s been reported that Mr Ashley’s loan has been approved by the remaining board members. An announcement to the Alternative Investment Market is expected first thing on Monday morning.
The deal with Sports Direct billionaire Mr Ashley comes despite an apparent offer from Dave King that could have seen £16m invested in the troubled club, yesterday it was also claimed that Brian Kennedy had offered the club emergency funding backed up by ‘good Rangers men’.
Ashley’s deal effectively puts him in control of the League One champions but that is unlikely to cause any concern for the SFA despite Mr Ashley also owning Newcastle United.
Already Mr Ashley owns the merchandising of the club with another deal for £1 struck with Charles Green giving Mr Ashley naming rights to the stadium which he has yet to activate.
With the Sports Direct chief now controlling the boardroom and the other main sources of income, merchandising and stadium naming rights, the club is now effectively just another outlet for the sportswear giant.
Forcing the entire issue has been the chronic finances of the club which has been losing the best part of £1m a month since inception in July 2012.
Chief executive Mr Wallace made reference to onerous contracts in his 128 day review published earlier this year with long term deals signed off for catering, merchandising and other areas of club activity.
Despite claims that Ally McCoist has taken a salary cut it is still believed that the club manager is being paid in the region of £800,000 a year with his extensive backroom team of Kenny McDowall, Ian Durrant, Jim Stewart, Billy Kirkwood, Gordon Durie and James Sinclair draining a similar amount from the club.
While Mr Ashley’s main concern will be to protect his merchandising revenue he is also likely to sanction a massive cost cutting exercise to get the club closer to break even point.
That could well spell the end for the state-of-the-art Murray Park training academy with the running costs for Murray Park and Ibrox approaching £20m a year.
With a competent manager being paid around £100,000 a year and players on no more than £2,000 a week playing in front of crowds of around 15,000 Mr Ashley may be capable of making the troubled club viable.
Mr King, Mr Kennedy, Paul Murray and others are likely to issue statements about their concern over the latest development while the Sons of Struth fans protest group are discussing a high profile red card protest at a future home match.